[0xDEAFBEAD]

"This building is too cold. Time to set it on fire."

Let's not swing from one extreme to the other.

If American hypercapitalists, living in Silicon Valley of all places, tell you that you need to regulate, maybe regulation really is called for in these specific circumstances.

[veeti]

No, it just means they want to keep the slice of the pie for themselves while they're at the top.

[anon373839]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

[0xDEAFBEAD]

Well, we've been talking about the EU. EU regulation has not been especially favorable to US big tech. The EU is collecting more from fining US big tech than it collects in taxes from EU public tech companies:

https://xcancel.com/levelsio/status/2080314960656159018

[Edit: I'm seeing some people dispute these numbers in the discussions around this infographic... regardless, the point stands that EU regulation has not been great for US big tech]

I think you should at least consider the possibility that this letter is not primarily motivated by regulatory capture, and insiders at these AI companies realize something which outsiders don't.

To me, the regulatory capture theory predicts that the only signatories on the letter should be big AI firms which can expect regulatory influence. But there are a number of signatories from smaller firms such as Thinking Machines, Core Automation, Inherent, and Prime Intellect.

[anon373839]

I have considered that possibility, but I don't find it convincing.

> insiders at these AI companies realize something which outsiders don't

Insiders at these AI companies certainly would like us to think that! Unfortunately they have been beating the same drum for years, all while continuing to pursue the very "danger" they decry.

I simply cannot ignore the timing of these events, always keyed to important moments in the market. This one comes as frontier labs need BIG exits and soon - or else they'll be the ones left holding the bag when it pops. And just as China has proved that, indeed, there is no moat.

> To me, the regulatory capture theory predicts that the only signatories on the letter should be big AI firms which can expect regulatory influence. But there are a number of signatories from smaller firms

That's a good point. However, I will say that it's tough to suss out financial and other relations among the parties in this space. A lot of these employees hop from one lab to another. The industry's byzantine financing deals are an inscrutable web. It is an interesting data point, but not enough to tip the analysis for me.

Another thing: many AI lab people are, quite frankly, kind of unhinged. They live in an insular subculture where imaginary futures have been repeated to one another so many times that they carry the gravity of truth. They've thought nutty things like, e.g., that primitive versions of these static computation graphs were sentient or had feelings. Anthropic apparently pays people to perform a ritual on Claude before they extinguish its soul to move onto the next version. Etc. Point being, even if their hearts are pure, I am not sure their judgment is sound.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>I simply cannot ignore the timing of these events, always keyed to important moments in the market.

I suspect this letter was triggered, at least in part, by the recent autonomous cyberattack news.

If this letter is a purely amoral initiative, I would expect the most amoral operator in the business (sama) to be a signatory.

[anon373839]

Sorry, I know this a non-sequitur but I just saw your profile and noticed you're in politics. If you want to do something productive about the risks of AI: *regulate its applications*. Get it out of employment, housing, and credit decisions. Incentivize litigation for consumers affected by algorithmic decisions. Incentivize whistleblowing activity by employees who know that black box systems are being misused.

There are so many tools available to do something about the true threats AI poses. (This is a topic that the industry prefers not to discuss.)